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User: chalkyj

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Comments · 43

  1. Re:Photocopy on German NSA Committee May Turn To Typewriters To Stop Leaks · · Score: 1

    Or photograph/scan them. It's not like being in physical form prevents instant digitisation, especially with how good OCR tech is now.

  2. Re:Tracking on Malaysian Flight Disappearance 'Deliberate' · · Score: 1

    In what situation would pressing the "off" button on a GPS transmitter that is currently on fire achieve anything? I think in general, a GPS transmitter will do a pretty job of turning off all by itself when its components are on fire. The likelihood of an electrical signal to an electrical device that is currently on fire doing anything at all is very slim, including when that signal is "turn off".

    There are already plenty of components on an aircraft that cannot be turned off by the pilot while in flight. The black box being the blindingly obvious example. They have transmitters that the pilot cannot turn off too, which is where the information in the article comes from. I have read that Malaysian airlines weren't using the transmitter to transmit more detailed information simply because they had not paid the subscription to use this advanced tracking. It seems like it would be helpful if such tracking systems automatically monitored the location of aircraft even if they don't do advanced performance monitoring purely to assist with emergency search and rescue.

  3. Re:Tracking on Malaysian Flight Disappearance 'Deliberate' · · Score: 1

    It's harder because putting satellites into space is harder than building cell towers but since both these things have already been done I'm not sure you're making a terribly relevant distinction. Modern aircraft have tracking systems that use satellite networks, the only real question is why is the pilot apparently able to disable it?

  4. Re:Tracking on Malaysian Flight Disappearance 'Deliberate' · · Score: 2

    I'm not sure you need to guarantee it resists all possible sabotage efforts. It just needs to not have an "off" button in the cockpit and be located in an inaccessible area of the aircraft. I assume the answer to this question is simply that the planes involved are probably fairly old, and that new planes do indeed have features like this. If I can buy a car with that sort of feature for anti-theft I'm sure putting it on a plane can't be terribly difficult.

  5. Re:99% on Microsoft Confirms Windows 8.1 Spring Update, To Focus On Non-touch Devices · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It'll be nice to use server 2013 without having to battle with a "touch screen optimised" interface. I guess they over estimated how many people are running server 2013 on tablets.

  6. Related to malicious filezilla? on Hackers Sweep Up FTP Credentials For the New York Times, UNICEF and 7,000 Others · · Score: 5, Insightful

    http://it.slashdot.org/story/1... May be related to something like this.

  7. Re:nuclear fusion? on Fusion Rocket Could Take Us To Mars · · Score: 1

    Presumably it's not a way of generating power, but rather storing it. Who knows how efficient the generation of this plasma is, but you probably need to burn far more energy to create it than is produced when it is used.

  8. Re:It's actually worse than stated... on Millions of Blogs Knocked Offline By Legal Row · · Score: 5, Funny

    What sort of world would we be living in if you couldn't make a big fat profit out of suicide prevention? Certainly not a world I'd want to live in...

  9. You think that's bad? on Blizzard Reveals Diablo 3 (Real Money) Auction House · · Score: 1

    Oh, don't get distracted by just this one piece of news when there's been so much more revealed!

    Max 4 person multiplayer! Region locking for co-op games! No offline single player! No mod support what so ever!

    Sure, this RMT auction house is the shitty icing on the shit cake, but lets not lose sight of the complete mess this game is going to be even without this feature.

    Source: http://www.destructoid.com/preview-diablo-iii-beta-207543.phtml

  10. Good luck with that! on UK Games Retailers Threaten Boycott of Steam Games · · Score: 1

    I'm pretty sure nobody walks into a retailer looking to buy a game, finds that it's not stocked then just completely gives up. No, you simply walk into a different retailer and look for it there. And if you can't find it anywhere, you think "well, that was a massive waste of time, I should have just bought it online". Like on Steam for example.

  11. Re:humm? on NASA's Space Balloon Smashes Car In Australia · · Score: 5, Informative

    Quite high if you had a car parked next to the launch rig. Which is what happened. If you bothered to click the link.

  12. Re:Confused as hell about this line on Google Italy Execs Convicted Over YouTube Bullying Video · · Score: 1

    Guilty of failure to comply with the Italian privacy code != guilty of criminal defamation.

  13. Re:MAD on TomTom Sues Microsoft For Patent Infringement · · Score: 2, Insightful
    But does anything actually come of these lawsuits? I read about infringement claims by trolls against large companies and by large companies against each other all the time, but they never seem to come to anything - or at least the outcome is never publicised.

    Does anyone have some information on what percentage of technology patent suits get thrown out of court and how many actually end in settlement or damages?

  14. Reloading a tab at the point that it crashed... on Look Out, Firefox 3 — IE8 Is Back On Top For Now · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Each tab is isolated from the others, so if one tab crashes, the entire browser doesn't go down. You can then restore the crashed tab, and when you do, it reloads with the information that had been in it when it crashed, such as a partially written e-mail. And if you were watching a video, the video will start playing at the point the tab crashed, not at the beginning of the video.

    Cool as that seems in theory, doesn't automatically reloading the exact state that the tab was in when it crashed mean that it will probably just crash again as soon as you reload it?

  15. Re:Easy solution on Internet-Caused Mistrials Are On the Rise · · Score: 2, Interesting

    What does that have to do with the Internet? Jurors can go home and read a newspaper to find out things that they're not meant to know too. If they want to go out and research things that they are not allowed to from home they don't need the internet to do it.

  16. Re:Why do I need Javascript to vote? on ISS's Node 3 Might Be Named "Colbert" · · Score: 1

    Captcha popup

  17. Re:bad "marketing" angle on Half-Life Short Film Grabs Attention · · Score: 1

    I have the feeling they didn't literally mean "no time what so ever". They're not trying to apologise for the quality of the film because it was simply willed into existence.

    It did take them some time - evidently it took them how ever long it took them to produce what they produced. The implication of "no time" being that they weren't able to put as much polish on it as they would have given more time.

    One would also assume that as independent film makers and commercial directors they had access to the software already, rather than trying to include every single resource involved as part of that one film's budget.

  18. Re:Makes you wonder on US Becomes Top Wind Producer; Solar Next · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yes, pat your selves on the back. America (9,161,923 SQ KM) has over taken Germany (357,021 SQ KM). Good work.

  19. Re:This is what baffles me... on Conficker Worm Could Create World's Biggest Botnet · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's poorly phrased. It doesn't create 250 domains per day, it CHECKS 250 domains per day. The botnet controller only needs to create one of those domains to upload new instructions.

  20. Re:Sad code, sad article on The Exact Cause of the Zune Meltdown · · Score: 5, Informative

    I think slashdot ate your < in the breaking line.

  21. Re:Cheaters? on Automated Scripts Overrun eBay Holiday Contest · · Score: 1

    The scripts aren't breaking any rules - TFA says that ebay can't decide what automation is legal and what isn't.

  22. Re:Great big hidden assumption on Ray Kurzweil Wonders, Can Machines Ever Have Souls? · · Score: 1

    The question "will machines ever have souls" is about as quantifiable as "will machines go to heaven". It has no scientific definition. It's completely pointless to try to answer it.

  23. Re:Tl;dr; on Review: Spore · · Score: 1
    I'd say: Flawed.

    I await a patch.

  24. Re:Do I understand this correctly? on PCMark Memory Benchmark Favors GenuineIntel · · Score: 4, Informative

    Is this like changing the user agent in a browser?

    Pretty much, yes.

  25. Re:Cannot sensibly deal with multiple terms on New Search Engine Cuil Takes Aim At Google · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Their search algorithms is really messed up for multiple search terms in other ways too. Do a search for something (anything!), and copy a 5 or 6 word phrase from the top search result.

    Stick that back into the search box and press search. 90% of the time you will get a "0 results found" message, even though you just saw that exact result.

    God knows how they are performing their searches!